Sri Ramakrishna’s Birthday

February 1942
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The Recorder of the Gospel

MAHENDRANĀTH GUPTA

In the life of the great Saviours and Prophets of the world it is

often found that they are accompanied by souls of high
spiritual potency who play a conspicuous part in the
furtherance of their Master’s mission. They become so integral
a part of the life and work of these great ones that posterity can
think of them only in mutual association. Such is the case with
Sri Ramakrishna and M., whose diary has come to be known
to the world as the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna in English and
as Sri Rāmakrishna Kathāmrita in the original Bengali
version.

Sri Mahendra Nath Gupta, familiary known to the readers of

the Gospel by his pen name M., and to the devotees as Master
Mahashay, was born on the 14th of July, 1854 as the son of
Madhusudan Gupta, an officer of the Calcutta High Court, and
his wife, Swarnamayi Devi. He had a brilliant scholastic career
at Hare School and the Presidency College at Calcutta. The
range of his studies included the best that both occidental and
oriental learning had to offer. English literature, history,
economics, western philosophy and law on the one hand, and
Sanskrit literature and grammar, Darsanas, Puranas, Smritis,
Jainism, Buddhism, astrology and Ayurveda on the other were
the subjects in which he attained considerable proficiency.

He was an educationist all his life both in a spiritual and in a

secular sense. After he passed out of College, he took up work
as headmaster in a number of schools in succession Narail
High School, City School, Ripon College School,
Metropolitan School, Aryan School, Oriental School, Oriental
Seminary and Model School. The causes of his migration from
school to school were that he could not get on with some of
the managements on grounds of principles and that often his
spiritual mood drew him away to places of pilgrimage for long
periods. He worked with some of the most noted public men
of the time like Iswar Chandra Vidyāsāgar and Surendranath
Banerjee. The latter appointed him as a professor in the City
and Ripon Colleges where he taught subjects like English,
philosophy, history and economics. In his later days he took
over the Morton School, and he spent his time in the staircase
room of the third floor of it, administering the school and
preaching the message of the Master. He was much respected
in educational circles where he was usually referred to as
Rector Mahashay. A teacher who had worked under him
writes thus in warm appreciation of his teaching methods:
“Only when I worked with him in school could I appreciate
what a great educationist he was. He would come down to the
level of his students when teaching, though he himself was so
learned, so talented. Ordinarily teachers confine their
instruction to what is given in books without much thought as
to whether the student can accept it or not. But M., would first
of all gauge how much the student could take in and by what
means. He would employ aids to teaching like maps, pictures
and diagrams, so that his students could learn by seeing. Thirty
years ago (from 1953) when the question of imparting
education through the medium of the mother tongue was being
discussed, M. had already employed Bengali as the medium of
instruction in the Morton School.” (M The Apostle and the
Evangelist by Swami Nityatmananda Part I. P. 15.)
Imparting secular education was, however, only his profession
; his main concern was with the spiritual regeneration of man a
calling for which Destiny seems to have chosen him. From his
childhood he was deeply pious, and he used to be moved very
much by Sādhus, temples and Durga Puja celebrations. The
piety and eloquence of the great Brahmo leader of the times,
Keshab Chander Sen, elicited a powerful response from the
impressionable mind of Mahendra Nath, as it did in the case of
many an idealistic young man of Calcutta, and prepared him to
receive the great Light that was to dawn on him with the
coming of Sri Ramakrishna into his life.

This epoch-making event of his life came about in a very

strange way. M. belonged to a joint family with several
collateral members. Some ten years after he began his career
as an educationist, bitter quarrels broke out among the
members of the family, driving the sensitive M. to despair and
utter despondency. He lost all interest in life and left home one
night to go into the wide world with the idea of ending his life.
At dead of night he took rest in his sister’s house at Baranagar,
and in the morning, accompanied by a nephew Siddheswar, he
wandered from one garden to another in Calcutta until
Siddheswar brought him to the Temple Garden of
Dakshineswar where Sri Ramakrishna was then living. After
spending some time in the beautiful rose gardens there, he was
directed to the room of the Paramahamsa, where the eventful
meeting of the Master and the disciple took place on a blessed
evening (the exact date is not on record) on a Sunday in March
1882. As regards what took place on the occasion, the reader is
referred to the opening section of the first chapter of the
Gospel.

The Master, who divined the mood of desperation in M, his

resolve to take leave of this ‘play-field of deception’, put new
faith and hope into him by his gracious words of assurance:
“God forbid! Why should you take leave of this world? Do
you not feel blessed by discovering your Guru? By His grace,
what is beyond all imagination or dreams can be easily
achieved!” At these words the clouds of despair moved away
from the horizon of M.‘s mind, and the sunshine of a new
hope revealed to him fresh vistas of meaning in life. Referring
to this phase of his life, M. used to say, “Behold! where is the
resolve to end life, and where, the discovery of God! That is,
sorrow should be looked upon as a friend of man. God is all
good.” ( Ibid P.33.)
After this re-settlement, M’s life revolved around the Master,
though he continued his professional work as an educationist.
During all holidays, including Sundays, he spent his time at
Dakshineswar in the Master’s company, and at times extended
his stay to several days.
It did not take much time for M. to become very intimate with
the Master, or for the Master to recognise in this disciple a
divinely commissioned partner in the fulfilment of his spiritual
mission. When M. was reading out the Chaitanya Bhagavata,
the Master discovered that he had been, in a previous birth, a
disciple and companion of the great Vaishnava Teacher, Sri
Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, and the Master even saw him ‘with
his naked eye’ participating in the ecstatic mass-singing of the
Lord’s name under the leadership of that Divine personality.
So the Master told M, “You are my own, of the same
substance as the father and the son,” indicating thereby that M.
was one of the chosen few and a part and parcel of his Divine
mission.

There was an urge in M. to abandon the household life and

become a Sannyāsin. When he communicated this idea to the
Master, he forbade him saying,” Mother has told me that you
have to do a little of Her work you will have to teach
Bhagavata, the word of God to humanity. The Mother keeps a
Bhagavata Pandit with a bondage in the world!”
( Ibid P.36.)

An appropriate allusion indeed! Bhagavata, the great scripture

that has given the word of Sri Krishna to mankind, was
composed by the Sage Vyāsa under similar circumstances.
When caught up in a mood of depression like that of M, Vyāsa
was advised by the sage Nārada that he would gain peace of
mind only qn composing a work exclusively devoted to the
depiction of the Lord’s glorious attributes and His teachings on
Knowledge and Devotion, and the result was that the world
got from Vyāsa the invaluable gift of the Bhagavata Purana
depicting the life and teachings of Sri Krishna.
From the mental depression of the modem Vyāsa, the world
has obtained the Kathāmrita (Bengali Edition) the Gospel of
Sri Ramakrishna in English.

Sri Ramakrishna was a teacher for both the Orders of

mankind, Sannyāsins and householders. His own life offered
an ideal example for both, and he left behind disciples who
followed the highest traditions he had set in respect of both
these ways of life. M., along with Nag Mahashay, exemplified
how a householder can rise to the highest level of sagehood.
M. was married to Nikunja Devi, a distant relative of Keshab
Chander Sen, even when he was reading at College, and he
had four children, two sons and two daughters. The
responsibility of the family, no doubt, made him dependent on
his professional income, but the great devotee that he was, he
never compromised with ideals and principles for this reason.
Once when he was working as the headmaster in a school
managed by the great Vidyāsāgar, the results of the school at
the public examination happened to be rather poor, and
Vidyāsāgar attributed it to M’s preoccupation with the Master
and his consequent failure to attend adequately to the school
work. M. at once resigned his post without any thought of the
morrow. Within a fortnight the family was in poverty, and M.
was one day pacing up and down the verandah of his house,
musing how he would feed his children the next day. Just then
a man came with a letter addressed to ‘Mahendra Babu’, and
on opening it, M. found that it was a letter from his friend Sri
Surendra Nath Banerjee, asking whether he would like to take
up a professorship in the Ripon College. In this way three or
four times he gave up the job that gave him the wherewithal to
support the family, either for upholding principles or for
practising spiritual Sadhanas in holy places, without any
consideration of the possible dire worldly consequences; but
he was always able to get over these difficulties somehow, and
the interests of his family never suffered. In spite of his
disregard for worldly goods, he was, towards the latter part of
his life, in a fairly flourishing condition as the proprietor of the
Morton School which he developed into a noted educational
institution in the city. The Lord has said in the Bhagavad Gitā
that in the case of those who think of nothing except Him, He
Himself would take up all their material and spiritual
responsibilities. M. was an example of the truth of the Lord’s
promise.

Though his children received proper attention from him, his

real family, both during the Master’s lifetime and after,
consisted of saints, devotees, Sannyāsins and spiritual
aspirants. His life exemplifies the Master’s teaching that an
ideal householder must be like a good maidservant of a family,
loving and caring properly for the children of the house, but
knowing always that her real home and children are elsewhere.
During the Master’s lifetime he spent all his Sundays and
other holidays with him and his devotees, and besides listening
to the holy talks and devotional music, practised meditation
both on the Personal and the Impersonal aspects of God under
the direct guidance of the Master. In the pages of the Gospel
the reader gets a picture of M.‘s spiritual relationship with the
Master how from a hazy belief in the Impersonal God of the
Brahmos, he was step by step brought to accept both
Personality and Impersonality as the two aspects of the same
Non-dual Being, how he was convinced of the manifestation
of that Being as Gods, Goddesses and as Incarnations, and
how he was established in a life that was both of a Jnāni and of
a Bhakta. This Jnāni-Bhakta outlook and way of living became
so dominant a feature of his life that Swami Raghavananda,
who was very closely associated with him during his last six
years, remarks: “Among those who lived with M. in latter
days, some felt that he always lived in this constant and
conscious union with God even with open eyes (i.e., even in
waking consciousness).” (Swami Raghavananda’s article on
M. in Prabuddha Bharata vol. XXXVII. P. 442.)
Besides undergoing spiritual disciplines at the feet of the
Master, M. used to go to holy places during the Master’s
lifetime itself and afterwards too as a part of his Sādhanā.
He was one of the earliest of the disciples to visit Kamarpukur,
the birthplace of the Master, in the latter’s lifetime itself; for
he wished to practise contemplation on the Master’s early life
in its true original setting. His experience there is described as
follows by Swami Nityatmananda: “By the grace of the
Master, he saw the entire Kamarpukur as a holy place bathed
in an effulgent Light. Trees and creepers, beasts and birds and
men all were made of effulgence. So he prostrated to all on the
road. He saw a torn cat, which appeared to him luminous with
the Light of Consciousness. Immediately he fell to the ground
and saluted it” (M The Apostle and the Evangelist by Swami
Nityatmananda vol. I. P. 40.) He had similar experience in
Dakshineswar also. At the instance of the Master he also
visited Puri, and in the words of Swami Nityatmananda, “with
indomitable courage, M. embraced the image of Jagannath out
of season.”
The life of Sādhanā and holy association that he started on at
the feet of the Master, he continued all through his life. He has
for this reason been most appropriately described as a
Grihastha-Sannyāsi (householder-Sannyāsin). Though he was
forbidden by the Master to become a Sannyāsin, his reverence
for the Sannyāsa ideal was whole-hearted and was without any
reservation. So after Sri Ramakrishna’s passing away, while
several of the Master’s householder devotees considered the
young Sannyāsin disciples of the Master as inexperienced and
inconsequential, M. stood by them with the firm faith that the
Master’s life and message were going to be perpetuated only
through them. Swami Vivekananda wrote from America in a
letter to the inmates of the Math: “When Sri Thākur (Master)
left the body, every one gave us up as a few unripe urchins.
But M. and a few others did not leave us in the lurch. We
cannot repay our debt to them.” (Swami Raghavananda’s
article on M. in Prabuddha Bharata vol. XXX P. 442.)
M. spent his weekends and holidays with the monastic
brethren who, after the Master’s demise, had formed
themselves into an Order with a Math at Baranagore, and
participated in the intense life of devotion and meditation that
they followed. At other times he would retire to Dakshineswar
or some garden in the city and spend several days in spiritual
practice taking simple self-cooked food. In order to feel that he
was one with all mankind he often used to go out of his home
at dead of night, and like a wandering Sannyāsin, sleep with
the waifs on some open verandah or footpath on the road.

After the Master’s demise, M. went on pilgrimage several

times. He visited Banāras, Vrindāvan, Ayodhyā and other
places. At Banāras he visited the famous Trailinga Swāmi and
fed him with sweets, and he had long conversations with
Swami Bhaskarananda, one of the noted saintly and scholarly
Sannyāsins of the time. In 1912 he went with the Holy Mother
to Banāras, and spent about a year in the company of
Sannyāsins at Banāras, Vrindāvan, Hardwar, Hrishikesh and
Swargashram. But he returned to Calcutta, as that city offered
him the unique opportunity of associating himself with the
places hallowed by the Master in his lifetime. Afterwards he
does not seem to have gone to any far-off place, but stayed on
in his room in the Morton School carrying on his spiritual
ministry, speaking on the Master and his teachings to the large
number of people who flocked to him after having read his
famous Kathāmrita known to English readers as The Gospel of
Sri Ramakrishna.

This brings us to the circumstances that led to the writing and

publication of this monumental work, which has made M. one
of the immortals in hagiographic literature.
While many educated people heard Sri Ramakrishna’s talks, it
was given to this illustrious personage alone to leave a graphic
and exact account of them for posterity, with details like date,
hour, place, names and particulars about participants.
Humanity owes this great book to the ingrained habit of diary-
keeping with which M. was endowed.
Even as a boy of about thirteen, while he was a student in the
3rd class of the Hare School, he was in the habit of keeping a
diary. “Today on rising,” he wrote in his diary, “I greeted my
father and mother, prostrating on the ground before them”
(Swami Nityatmananda’s ‘M The Apostle and the Evangelist’
Part I. P 29.) At another place he wrote, “Today, while on my
way to school, I visited, as usual, the temples of Kāli, the
Mother at Tharitharia, and of Mother Sitala, and paid my
obeisance to them.” About twenty-five years after, when he
met the Great Master in the spring of 1882, it was the same
instinct of a born diary-writer that made him begin his book,
‘unique in the literature of hagiography’, with the memorable
words: “When hearing the name of Hari or Rāma once, you
shed tears and your hair stands on end, then you may know for
certain that you do not have to perform devotions such as
Sandhya any more.”

In addition to this instinct for diary-keeping, M. had great

endowments contributing to success in this line. Writes Swami
Nityatmananda who lived in close association with M., in his
book entitled M - The Apostle and Evangelist: “M.‘s
prodigious memory combined with his extraordinary power of
imagination completely annihilated the distance of time and
place for him. Even after the lapse of half a century he could
always visualise vividly, scenes from the life of Sri
Ramakrishna. Superb too was his power to portray pictures by
words.”

Besides the prompting of his inherent instinct, the main

inducement for M. to keep this diary of his experiences at
Dakshineswar was his desire to provide himself with a means
for living in holy company at all times. Being a school teacher,
he could be with the Master only on Sundays and other
holidays, and it was on his diary that he depended for ‘holy
company’ on other days. The devotional scriptures like the
Bhagavata say that holy company is the first and most
important means for the generation and growth of devotion.
For, in such company man could hear talks on spiritual matters
and listen to the glorification of Divine attributes, charged
with the fervour and conviction emanating from the hearts of
great lovers of God. Such company is therefore the one certain
means through which Sraddha (Faith), Rati (attachment to
God) and Bhakti (loving devotion) are generated. The diary of
his visits to Dakshineswar provided M. with material for re-
living, through reading and contemplation, the holy company
he had had earlier, even on days when he was not able to visit
Dakshineswar. The wealth of details and the vivid description
of men and things in the midst of which the sublime
conversations are set, provide excellent material to re-live
those experiences for any one with imaginative powers. It was
observed by M.‘s disciples and admirers that in later life also
whenever he was free or alone, he would be pouring over his
diary, transporting himself on the wings of imagination to the
glorious days he spent at the feet of the Master.

During the Master’s lifetime M. does not seem to have

revealed the contents of his diary to any one. There is an
unconfirmed tradition that when the Master saw him taking
notes, he expressed apprehension at the possibility of his
utilising these to publicise him like Keshab Sen; for the Great
Master was so full of the spirit of renunciation and humility
that he disliked being lionised. It must be for this reason that
no one knew about this precious diary of M. for a decade until
he brought out selections from it as a pamphlet in English in
1897 with the Holy Mother’s blessings and permission. The
Holy Mother, being very much pleased to hear parts of the
diary read to her in Bengali, wrote to M.: “When I heard the
Kathāmrita, (Bengali name of the book) I felt as if it was he,
the Master, who was saying all that.” ( Ibid Part I. P 37.)
The two pamphlets in English entitled the Gospel of Sri
Ramakrishna appeared in October and November 1897. They
drew the spontaneous acclamation of Swami Vivekananda,
who wrote on 24th November of that year from Dehra Dun to
M.:“Many many thanks for your second leaflet. It is indeed
wonderful. The move is quite original, and never was the life
of a Great Teacher brought before the public untarnished by
the writer’s mind, as you are doing. The language also is
beyond all praise, so fresh, so pointed, and withal so plain and
easy. I cannot express in adequate terms how I have enjoyed
them. I am really in a transport when I read them. Strange,
isn’t it? Our Teacher and Lord was so original, and each one of
us will have to be original or nothing.
I now understand why none of us attempted His life before. It
has been reserved for you, this great work. He is with you
evidently.” ( Vedānta Kesari Vol. XIX P. 141. Also given in
the first edition of the Gospel published from Ramakrishna
Math, Madras in 1911.)
And Swamiji added a post script to the letter: “Socratic
dialogues are Plato all over you are entirely hidden. Moreover,
the dramatic part is infinitely beautiful. Everybody likes it here
or in the West.” Indeed, in order to be unknown,
Mahendranath had used the pen-name M., under which the
book has been appearing till now. But so great a book cannot
remain obscure for long, nor can its author remain
unrecognised by the large public in these modern times. M.
and his book came to be widely known very soon and to meet
the growing demand, a full-sized book, Vol. I of the Gospel,
translated by the author himself, was published in 1907 by the
Brahmavadin Office, Madras. A second edition of it, revised
by the author, was brought out by the Ramakrishna Math,
Madras in December 1911, and subsequently a second part,
containing new chapters from the original Bengali, was
published by the same Math in 1922. The full English
translation of the Gospel by Swami Nikhilananda appeared
first in 1942.
In Bengali the book is published in five volumes, the first part
having appeared in 1902
and the others in 1905, 1907, 1910 and 1932 respectively.

It looks as if M. was brought to the world by the Great Master

to record his words and transmit them to posterity. Swami
Sivananda, a direct disciple of the Master and the second
President of the Ramakrishna Math and Mission, says on this
topic: “Whenever there was an interesting talk, the Master
would call Master Mahashay if he was not in the room, and
then draw his attention to the holy words spoken. We did not
know then why the Master did so. Now we can realise that this
action of the Master had an important significance, for it was
reserved for Master Mahashay to give to the world at large the
sayings of the Master.” ( Vedānta Kesari Vol. XIX P 141.)
Thanks to M., we get, unlike in the case of the great teachers
of the past, a faithful record with date, time, exact report of
conversations, description of concerned men and places,
references to contemporary events and personalities and a
hundred other details for the last four years of the Master’s life
(1882-‘86), so that no one can doubt the historicity of the
Master and his teachings at any time in the future.

M. was, in every respect, a true missionary of Sri Ramakrishna

right from his first acquaintance with him in 1882. As a school
teacher, it was a practice with him to direct to the Master such
of his students as had a true spiritual disposition. Though
himself prohibited by the Master to take to monastic life, he
encouraged all spiritually inclined young men he came across
in his later life to join the monastic Order. Swami
Vijnanananda, a direct Sannyāsin disciple of the Master and a
President of the Ramakrishna Order, once remarked to M.:
“By enquiry, I have come to the conclusion that eighty percent
and more of the Sannyāsins have embraced the monastic life
after reading the Kathāmrita (Bengali name of the book) and
coming in contact with you.” ( M
The Apostle and the Evangelist by Swami Nityatmananda Part
I, P 37.)
In 1905 he retired from the active life of a Professor and
devoted his remaining twenty-seven years exclusively to the
preaching of the life and message of the Great Master. He
bought the Morton Institution from its original proprietors and
shifted it to a commodious four-storeyed house at 50 Amherst
Street, where it flourished under his management as one of the
most efficient educational institutions in Calcutta. He
generally occupied a staircase room at the top of it, cooking
his own meal which consisted only of milk and rice without
variation, and attended to all his personal needs himself. His
dress also was the simplest possible. It was his conviction that
limitation of personal wants to the minimum is an important
aid to holy living. About one hour in the morning he would
spend in inspecting the classes of the school, and then retire to
his staircase room to pour over his diary and live in the divine
atmosphere of the earthly days of the Great Master, unless
devotees and admirers had already gathered in his room
seeking his holy company.

In appearance, M. looked a Vedic Rishi. Tall and stately in

bearing, he had a strong and well-built body, an unusually
broad chest, high forehead and arms extending to the knees.
His complexion was fair and his prominent eyes were always
tinged with the expression of the divine love that filled his
heart. Adorned with a silvery beard that flowed luxuriantly
down his chest, and a shining face radiating the serenity and
gravity of holiness, M. was as imposing and majestic as he
was handsome and engaging in appearance. Humorous, sweet-
tongued and eloquent when situations required, this great
Maharishi of our age lived only to sing the glory of Sri
Ramakrishna day and night.
Though a very well versed scholar in the Upanishads, Gitā and
the philosophies of the East and the West, all his discussions
and teachings found their culmination in the life and the
message of Sri Ramakrishna, in which he found the real
explanation and illustration of all the scriptures. Both
consciously and unconsciously, he was the teacher of the
Kathāmrita the nectarine words of the Great Master.
Though a much-sought-after spiritual guide, an educationist of
repute, and a contemporary and close associate of illustrious
personages like Sri Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekananda,
Keshab Chander Sen and Iswar Chander Vidyāsāgar, he was
always moved by the noble humanity of a lover of God, which
consists in respecting the personalities of all as receptacles of
the Divine Spirit. So he taught without the consciousness of a
teacher, and no bar of superiority stood in the way of his doing
the humblest service to his students and devotees. “He was a
commission of love,” writes his close devotee, Swami
Raghavananda, “and yet his soft and sweet words would
pierce the stoniest heart, make the worldly-minded weep and
repent and turn Godwards.”
( Prabuddha Bharata Vol. XXXVII P 499.)

As time went on and the number of devotees increased, the

staircase room and terrace of the 3rd floor of the Morton
Institution became a veritable Naimisaranya of modern times,
resounding during all hours of the day, and sometimes of
night, too, with the word of God coming from the Rishi-like
face of M. addressed to the eager God-seekers sitting around.
To the devotees who helped him in preparing the text of the
Gospel, he would dictate the conversations of the Master in a
meditative mood, referring now and then to his diary. At times
in the stillness of midnight he would awaken a nearby devotee
and tell him: “Let us listen to the words of the Master in the
depths of the night as he explains the truth of the Pranava.” (
Vedānta Kesari XIX P. 142.) Swami Raghavananda, an
intimate devotee of M., writes as follows about these
devotional sittings: “In the sweet and warm months of April
and May, sitting under the canopy of heaven on the roof-
garden of 50 Amherst Street, surrounded by shrubs and plants,
himself sitting in their midst like a Rishi of old, the stars and
planets in their courses beckoning us to things infinite and
sublime, he would speak to us of the mysteries of God and His
love and of the yearning that would rise in the human heart to
solve the Eternal Riddle, as exemplified in the life of his
Master. The mind, melting under the influence of his soft
sweet words of light, would almost transcend the frontiers of
limited existence and dare to peep into the infinite. He himself
would take the influence of the setting and say,‘What a blessed
privilege it is to sit in such a setting (pointing to the starry
heavens), in the company of the devotees discoursing on God
and His love!’ These unforgettable scenes will long remain
imprinted on the minds of his hearers.” (Prabuddha Bharata
Vol XXXVII P 497.)

About twenty-seven years of his life he spent in this way in the

heart of the great city of Calcutta, radiating the Master’s
thoughts and ideals to countless devotees who flocked to him,
and to still larger numbers who read his Kathāmrita (English
Edition : The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna), the last part of
which he had completed before June 1932 and given to the
press. And miraculously, as it were, his end also came
immediately after he had completed his life’s mission. About
three months earlier he had come to stay at his home at 13/2
Gurdasprasad Chaudhuary Lane at Thakur Bari, where the
Holy Mother had herself installed the Master and where His
regular worship was being conducted for the previous 40
years. The night of 3rd June being the Phalahārini Kāli Pooja
day, M.
had sent his devotees who used to keep company with him, to
attend the special worship at Belur Math at night. After
attending the service at the home shrine, he went through the
proof of the Kathāmrita for an hour. Suddenly he got a severe
attack of neuralgic pain, from which he had been suffering
now and then, of late. Before 6 a.m. in the early hours of 4th
June 1932 he passed away, fully conscious and chanting:
‘Gurudeva-Ma, Kole tule na-o (Take me in your arms! O
Master! O Mother!!)’